The Archive Residency, a collaboration between New Ohio Theatre and IRT Theater (likeminded neighbors in the historic Archive Building in the West Village), is a unique incubator for the country's most promising emerging independent theater companies. This two year residency offers each company that most elusive and invaluable resource, an artistic home, including space, artistic support, and institutional continuity for the development and presentation of a new work, culminating in an exciting world premiere.
The second company completing their residency is Rady&Bloom Collective Playmaking, presenting the World Premiere of The Upper Room, co-written and co-directed by Jeremy Bloom and Brian Rady, with music composed and performed by
Catherine Brookman (Broadway revival of Hair), running tonight, May 22 - June 12, 2015. Previews begin May 22 for a May 28 opening.
Shows take place at New Ohio Theatre, located at 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in New York City. Tickets are $18 and $15 for students and seniors, and can be purchased online at
NewOhioTheatre.org or by calling 1-888-596-1027. For info visit
NewOhioTheatre.org, Like them on Facebook at
www.Facebook.com/NewOhioTheatre and follow on Twitter at @NewOhioTheatre.
About the Archive Residency: The first year includes a one-month stay in IRT's 3B Development Series, and a one-week presentation in New Ohio's OBIE Award-winning Ice Factory summer festival. The second year includes additional time at IRT, and culminates with a fully realized, four-week run in the New Ohio's main season. Each fall, two more independent companies are invited into the Archive Residency, bringing the program to full strength with four companies in residence, each cycling through the two-year development process. Current Archive Residency alumni include The Mad Ones and Collaboration Town. Membership into the Archive Residency is by invitation only.
Rady&Bloom Collective Playmaking's World Premiere of The Upper Room runs May 22 - June 12. Performances are Tuesdays - Saturdays at 8pm. The running time is 80 minutes.
The Upper Room is a new play with original music inspired by the back-to-the-land movement. Set on an island way off the north coast of Maine, the last participants of a once thriving commune meet the sea. Anxious and restless, the quorum gathers around the table in their upper room to confront the rising water and certain members' curious ailments. A darkly humorous consideration of spirituality and the dangers of our changing environment combines with a live mixed score, antique scuba suits and an overhead projector to create a brand new music theater event.
The cast includes
Catherine Brookman (Hair on Broadway, Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812), Tjasa Ferme, Robert Gadol Lavenstein, Dana Kaplan-Angle,
Govind Kumar,
Joyce Miller, Stacy Ayn Price,
Julia Sirna-Frest (founding member of the Obie Award-winning theater company Half Straddle),
Heather Thiry and
Joe White.
The creative team includes
Catherine Brookman (Original Music), Rady&Bloom (Set & Costume Design) and
Jay Ryan (Lighting Design).
Rady&Bloom Collective Playmaking is the husband/husband team of Jeremy Bloom and Brian Rady. They have worked at
Ars Nova, The Flea, New Ohio, IRT, The Brick, the cell, Walkerspace and Exapno. Their major directing fellowships include the Drama League Director's Project, the
Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the EST Director's Residency and the
T.S. Eliot Directing Fellowship. They have received support from LMCC's Process Space and Manhattan Community Arts Fund/the NYS Department of Cultural Affairs, the Archive Residency, The Drama League's Artist Residency Program and the HERE Artist Residency Program. R&B's Peter/Wendy is published by Playscripts. For info visit
www.RadyAndBloom.com.
Rady&Bloom Collective Playmaking stage narratives in a stripped down, efficient manner, with high energy and a sense of visual lyricism. They are drawn to modern mythology - stories that ask us to believe in something bigger than ourselves. Among a diverse and growing ensemble, they devise music and words directly from and designed for the performers, building roles and characters to the eccentricities of specific group dynamics. Distilled from personal experience, they cultivate a mood, an assertive and complex yet welcoming cultural texture - party meets epic meets chorale meets ethnography.
New Ohio Theatre is a two-time OBIE Award-winning theatre that serves New York's most adventurous theatre audiences by developing and presenting the boldest, most innovative work of today's vast independent theatre community. They believe the best of this community, the small artist-driven ensembles and the daring producing companies who operate without a permanent theatrical home, are actively expanding the boundaries of where American theatre is right now and where it's going. New Ohio Theatre nurtures, strengthens, and promotes this community; as we reestablish the West Village as a destination for mature, ridiculous, engaged, irreverent, gut-wrenching, frivolous, sophisticated, foolish and profound theatrical endeavors. The theatre is accessible from the #1 train to Christopher St. or A, B, C, D, E, F or M train to West 4th St. For info visit
NewOhioTheatre.org.
IRT Theater is a grassroots laboratory for independent theater and performance in New York City, providing space and support to a new generation of artists. Tucked away in the old Archive Building in Greenwich Village, IRT's mission is to build a community of emerging and established artists by creating a home for the development and presentation of new work. Some of the artists they have supported include
Young Jean Lee,
Reggie Watts,
Mike Daisey and many others. For info visit
irttheater.org.
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